Andy Bennett's Popular Music Analysis

Andy Bennett’s book presents a refreshing perspective to the sociology field as the topic had been previously lacking and outdated. By proposing significant amounts of original research Bennett’s two-part analytical text has turned into a book from a doctoral thesis; seeking to ascertain how popular music is taken as a cultural resource. The wisely connected information slips within the more broad international literature on youth styles, local spaces and popular music. Bennett successfully illustrates graphically how styles of music and their attendant stylistic innovations are assumed. As a lecturer on Sociology, Bennett’s work is unsurprisingly directed at undergraduate and postgraduate students in the sociology field. His references are

Bennett attempts to challenge the idea that popular music establishes a cultural text that has a connotation autonomous of its audience. Continually asserting that people are more than a cultural impeccant who unreceptively devour the product of the music industry; arguing that they are in fact instinctive instruments that construe and apply popular music in a means that are precarious and imaginative. Bennett proceeds to illuminate this argument by conducting several ethnographic studies in Newcastle upon Tyne. By citing a diverse number of musical forms such as bhangra, hip hop and rock, Bennett attempts to place an etic reading on their existing dance culture. By exposing those engaged in Newcastle’s dance scene he has managed to uncover the conformist hierarchies of taste by drawing on the assorted musical forms. This led to Bennett’s first limitation, by placing an age limitation on his subjects and ‘assuming’ that the local dance culture is only appealing to the younger generation and suggesting that the “underground ethos of the local dance culture us read as a form of resistance to those who exercise conventional political and commercial power in the

Bennett accurately states that people do not embrace music that the global culture industries throw around in the hopes of creating a connection. People have and continue to think judiciously about popular music and the importance it evokes. It needs to be known that many opinions and moods that social beings have about popular music take place within controlled or persuasive environments. The influence that these environments hold allows people to restrict their cultural predilections and practices, or to create their own relationship to the musical texts. Bennett’s ignorance toward the structural context within which a person’s relationship with music evolves is essential to form a sufficient judgment of musical practice. The restriction on Bennett’s scope of study is directly related to his inability to study more than a minority in the European Culture. By diversifying his study like he has claimed to, would allow copious more readers to be engaged with his